I am looking to do a few Trash-the-Dress sessions in August/September and I am looking for models who would be willing to play around with their wedding dresses.

If you don’t know what a Trash the Dress session is, allow me to explain. It’s a very fun session to do where you (the model) get to wear your wedding dress again for some beautiful, artsy portraits of yourself in them. I’m not talking about posed photos in front of a garden, either; it’s called Trash the Dress for a reason. Some women swim in their dresses, some pose in and around dirty abandoned buildings, some roll around in the sand and let the waves crash over them at the beach. You do not have to destroy your dress, but the spirit behind it is to make beautiful images without being worried about getting dirt on the dress.

The thought process behind it is that you won’t get to wear your dress again anyway… you can keep it vacuum packed in the plastic bag forever, or you could get some stunning portraits to really remember the gorgeous dress you spent so much money on.

Sounds like fun, right?

This is where you come in. If you are interested in a session, I am looking for 2 models for the months of August/September. These 2 models will receive a free session, and a free 8×10 of their choice. The best 20-30 images will be posted in a secure online gallery for viewing for 3 weeks and will be available for order.

We’re not just about winning, either. Runners up will receive $50 off their session fee for any month booked (any trash the dress session booked, you are not limited to August/September).

To make it fair, I’m going to do this as a contest! To enter, please email me (jen-at-jensnyder-dot-net) a wedding photo of you in the dress, along with the year the photo was taken. The winner will be chosen by a panel of judges, and will be announced in this blog. You have until July 19th to enter, and winners will be announced on July 26.

If you are submitting a professional photo, please be certain you have permission to repost the photographer’s work and please credit the photographer. I will be posting the winner’s submitted photographs on this blog.

My beautiful niece Lisey loves the show America’s Next Top Model. So of course that means we have to do a modeling photoshoot! She brought along some dressup clothes, a great playlist on her mom’s ipod, and we had fun. Here are some highlights!

Part two of the Martin family photoshoot featured the extremely beautiful sisters Amber and Katie. They were a lot of fun to photograph and I am really looking forward to doing a runway-style session with them. (Think: white backdrop, strobes, crazy clothes, and a fan on high so their hair will blow dramatically)

This week I had the pleasure of photographing the Martin family! We decided to split them up into 3 sessions to keep things short and simple, because as we all know the attention spans of toddlers and preschoolers aren’t exactly long.

Christopher, Caleb, and Brady were my models for the first session and they were adorable. All three seemed to have a great time striking poses for me. Here are my favorites!

(I am trying a new way to post images. I normally have a 400×600 for verticals and 600×400 for horizontals, but then blogger resizes everything to be 400 pixels wide… which makes the horizontals look like a big bowl of yuck, however you can click on them to see the actual larger image. Well, I don’t know if people actually click, so I am making them all small to start. If this doesn’t work out and you would prefer me to post images the old way so you could at least click to get a larger view, let me know and I will go back to doing it that way)

I love baby bellies. Especially baby bellies belonging to my dear friend Terry. Add to the beautiful belly an equally beautiful little girl and I was in heaven. She had better let me photograph the newborn!

Here are a few highlights… I hope she enjoys them!

Have kids? Want to get free photos of them? Host a portrait party!

What’s a portrait party, you ask? It’s like a tupperware party, but instead of learning about how a plastic container can change your life, we are taking portraits of your children.

The host of the party will get a free 8×10 and 20% of the group’s print order as a print credit. (i.e. if your guests order a total of $100 in prints, you get a $20 print credit to use on your party order)

Invite 8-12 of your friends with kids, sit back and have a good time while I photograph 20 minute mini sessions with each child.